Wendy Williams Addresses Odd On-Screen Behavior in New Interview, Calls Out 'People Looking to Pick and Poke'

Kimberly Roots
·2 min read
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Wendy Williams maintains she’s “doing well,” despite viewers’ concerns over her behavior during a recent broadcast of her syndicated talk show.

In an exclusive interview with TVLine, Williams discussed the Friday, Oct. 23, episode of The Wendy Williams Show, during which she appeared disoriented.

At times during that broadcast’s Hot Topics segment, she slurred words, trailed off in the middle of sentences or appeared to be lost. A discussion of rapper Rick Ross and his recent real estate acquisition was filled with several long silences. Later, she spent several minutes seemingly entranced by the harp music the show used for its Shoe-Cam segment.

On the following episode, the host seemed to address the incident vaguely, saying, “I guess every day is not perfect, but I’m not a perfectionist. I’m not perfect.”

When TVLine asked whether she had anything to add regarding the Oct. 23 show, Williams said, “No,” and referred to her decades-long career. “Me saying, ‘I’m not perfect,’ I’ve done that for almost all 30 years of my broadcast career, you know?”

She noted that there are always “people looking to pick and poke, and that was before social media. And all of a sudden, social media came up and people, they get together and they want to think what they think.

“All I am,” she added, “is Wendy. That’s it.”

In May, Williams cited fatigue from Grave’s Disease — an autoimmune disease where the thyroid gland overproduces hormones — as the reason that she stepped away from the show for a while. She went public with her diagnosis in February 2018 and took an extended break from the show, following an incident where she fainted during a live taping. Williams took another hiatus from the show last year after complications from Graves’ disease led to “significant time” in the hospital.

She returned on Sept. 21, filming in her New York City studio to a reduced, masked, socially distanced live audience.

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